It’s a banner day today for NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, which hit the 30-day mark of its initial three-month mission to study the bleak Martian arctic for buried water ice.

Not only is today Sol 30 (a sol is a Martian day) for Phoenix, but it’s also the summer solstice on Mars, where the sun hits the northernmost point of its path across the sky. Earth’s own summer solstice was last Saturday, June 21.

Phoenix is poised to “taste” Martian soil in this image taken on June 24, 2008. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A & M.

So what do we know about the Martian arctic at the one-third mark of Phoenix’s initial mission?

Well, there’s apparently ice in them thar trenches for sure. In a coup for Phoenix, images of the probe’s robotic arm-dug trenches caught ice evaporation in action over the course of a few days last week. Scientists hailed it as a major milestone showing that Phoenix’s can in fact reach local ice stores buried beneath the dirt covered surface.

It’s also cold, like super-frigid cold. Even in the eternally day arctic summer, where the sun strays close but never below the Martian horizon, the temperatures tend to range between minus 20 and minus 120 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 30 to minus 85 degrees Celsius).

Scientists now know that the Martian arctic soil tends to be a bit clumpy, with the first sample clogging one of Phoenix’s eight small ovens before the probe managed to shake some dirt inside.

The focus of today’s work on Mars for Phoenix was aimed at delivering a sample of Martian dirt into the probe’s wet chemistry laboratory, suite of teacup-sized beakers designed to serve as “electronic tongues” to taste the stuff and determine its composition, NASA officials.

Mission managers even hope to run Phoenix at least one extra month beyond its initial three-month mission, so long as the $420 million probe is still healthy and able to do science. Phoenix landed on Mars on May 25, 2008 and is designed to hunt for buried water ice to learn if the Martian arctic could have once been habitable for primitive life.

Editor’s note: If you want to be nitpicky, today is actually Phoenix’s 31st day on Mars. On landing day, mission scientists opted to start at Sol 0, not Sol 1.

Editor’s note 2: And if you REALLY want to get technical, you’d have to factor in the fact that days on Mars are longer than they are on Earth, with on Martian day running about 40 minutes or so longer that their Earthly counterparts. This space reporter is not getting that technical.